Illegal modifications and counterfeiting of identification documents, such as passports, drivers licenses, and identification cards and badges; and documents of value, such as bonds, certificates and negotiable instruments, has been increasing year by year to the concern of companies, governments and their agencies that issue these documents. To counter this problem new materials have been and are being developed for the production of such identity documents and documents of value, that make it more and more difficult to alter or counterfeit the documents, and easier and faster to detect if such documents are counterfeit or have been altered.
These new materials utilize new laminating schemes and materials that utilize optically variable devices, invisible inks that only appear when illuminated by certain wavelengths of visible or invisible light; retro-reflective layers inside the laminating materials; different types of inks that have one color under normal ambient light but show up as different colors when illuminated by certain wavelengths of invisible light, and many other schemes. In addition, magnetic and radio frequency (RF) taggants may be added to the laminates or base material of documents during their manufacture, and such taggants may be detected while being invisible to the eye. Further, micro-miniature smart chips may be embedded in such documents, such as they are in smart cards, and used in reading and verifying documents such as listed above.
The rise of passports, documents of value, and other security and identification documents having anti-counterfeiting, anti-alteration and verification features, and the new laminating materials, some of which are briefly described above, have created a growing need for new and improved document reader, verifier equipment that can rapidly read, verify, and analyze many different types of passports, documents of value, identity and security documents made utilizing the new materials, techniques and laminating materials described above. Such document reader, verifier equipment is desperately needed at high traffic locations, such as international airports around the world, where millions of travelers pass between countries each year. However, such new and improved equipment is also needed for many other applications such as reading and checking identity badges of employees and others in high security installations where government or industrial confidential or secret information is to be protected, and access and movements are carefully limited, controlled and recorded. In addition, such new and improved reader verifier equipment is desperately needed to check different types of documents of value.
Document reader verifier equipment for identity documents and documents of value require document illumination and imaging systems to illuminate documents with light of different wavelengths and with the light being applied to documents at different angles in order to detect and/or verify security features and unauthorized alterations in such documents. As new types of security features are created and used in such identity documents and documents of value there is a need in the prior art for new and improved document reader verifier equipment and the illumination and imaging systems used therein.